


Confetti

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Force (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Clones, Gen, Mojoworld, Mother-Son Relationship, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 06:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16635020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Spiral's life doesn't happen in order, but there are pieces and parts she likes to cling to.





	Confetti

> "I thought for so long that time was like a line, that... that our moments were laid out like dominoes, and that they... fell, one into another and on it went, just days tipping, one into the next, into the next, in a long line between the beginning... and the end. But I was wrong. It's not like that at all. Our moments fall around us like rain. Or... snow. Or confetti."   
> \- Nell Crain, "The Haunting of Hill House"
> 
>  

* * *

 

 

“The boy,” Spiral says, two of her hands grasping, reaching. “Give me the boy.”

“Yeah, right,” Rictor scowls, putting an arm protectively in front of Shatterstar and baby Shatterstar. But ‘Star edges around him and, with only a moment of hesitation, hands over his younger self. “ _ ¿Qué haces? _ ”

“It’s alright,” Shatterstar says, watching Spiral take the baby carefully, cradling him against her chest. “She’s not here on Mojo’s orders. She’s just… here.”

 

* * *

 

“Spiral, have you ever been to Boston?” Longshot asks as they wait for the smashed television to stop sparking. 

Her glare is just as sharp as her knives. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

 

* * *

 

Timmy Wayword tucks a long lock of hair behind one ear with shaking hands. Hippie hair, their parents’ friends called it, but Rita likes it. It suits him. “L-look, a buddy o’ mine gave me this pamphlet, and it says… it says you should start by tellin’ somebody you trust a lot,” Tim says. “And there ain’t nobody in the world I trust more’n you, sis. So here goes. I’m gay.”

“Oh…” In seconds, her arms are around him. “I’m so proud of you, kid. I’m so happy you told me, gosh… that must’ve been scarier’n riding any of Daddy’s buckin’ broncos.” 

“It was,” Timmy admits, hugging her back. “Aw, man, it was. Love you, Rita.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a knock on the door at the Boston apartment of Tim and Marcus Russell. Tim gets it, staring in bewilderment at the woman on his doorstep. She’s wearing a huge trench coat and a hooded shawl to hide her shape, and only her bright eyes are visible. Her eyes, and the baby in the crook of her arm. “Uh, can I help you?” Tim asks.

The woman breathes, shudders. “Hey, Timmy.”

 

* * *

 

“I only remember the arena,” Shatterstar says. “Nothing else.”

One of her hands comes up to cup the side of his face, her thumb sweeping across his star mark. He does not move away. “Child,” she whispers, “you entered that arena when you were 12 years old. Who do you think took care of you those first 12 years?”

 

* * *

 

“My life,” she says, “every time I close my eyes, it changes. It’s like I’m constantly flipping channels on the television, watching all these shows, all these stories, out of order.” She hates this, hates crying in front of anyone but especially in front of Alison. “I live outside of time. You don’t really understand what that means until it’s all you know.”

 

* * *

 

Mojo makes her watch Shatterstar’s first fight.

He wins, barely.

 

* * *

 

“What is this?” Spiral demands, striding into Arize’s workshop. “What have you done?”

The child sleeps soundly in his incubation chamber, unaware of the twisted world around him. “You’ve seen how popular the Gaveedra-7 model is in the arena,” Arize explains calmly, clasping his hands in front of him. He is a necessary cog in the machine of Mojoworld. Surely, Spiral knows this. Surely, Spiral would do nothing to harm him, knowing how it would disrupt the rest of the system. “I knew I had to make my own copy before his genetic code was licensed and restricted, you know how tiresome it is dealing with copyright laws.”

She sees Arize without seeing him. Her eyes are fixed on the child. “I am taking him,” she says. “You will not try this again.” 

“Now, listen—” But her dagger is suddenly beneath his chin, protruding through his coarse beard to find the vulnerable skin of his neck. 

“I am taking him,” she repeats. With the arms that are not occupied threatening Arize, she lifts the child up and cradles him close to her body.

 

* * *

 

“I thought he would be safer here than at a hospital without any experience with… well, with mutants.” Dr. Weisman is talking, saying so many kind and important things, and Spiral tunes most of them out. Her eyes are on the boy on the bed.

At 13, he is still just a child, really. Only a year older than Shatterstar was when she was forced to give him up to the gladiatorial stage. “Thank you, Doctor,” Spiral says quietly. “You may go now.”

“Ma’am—”

“ _ You may go now _ ,” Spiral says, stepping further into the room. Dr. Weisman walks away, her shiny loafers tapping on the floor of the institution. Spiral walks to the boy’s bedside, puts one hand over his. “Hello, Benjamin,” she whispers, feeling the pain come back to her.

 

* * *

 

Rita misses her brother’s commitment ceremony because she’s in the Mojoverse, fighting for freedom.

 

* * *

 

“I loved your parents, you know,” she tells Shatterstar. “I didn’t show it… didn’t act like it, I suppose… but I loved them dearly.”

He grits his teeth, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at her. “You stuck a mask to my mother’s face with a knife.” 

“Is she  _ still  _ not over that?”  

 

* * *

 

“The boy is a mutant, too,” Spiral explains, staring out at the bleak expanse of the Wildways. Mojo puts so much into making the city vibrant and loud. Everything outside the city limits looks gray. Quiet. Empty. “His power… it's like mine.” She feels Longshot behind her, feels him hesitate to approach her. “He can teleport. Move through space and time, but…” Spiral does not cry, so the sound she makes now is not a sob. It can't be. Just a gray, quiet, empty noise. “He needs an anchor. Someone he's connected to… otherwise, he…” She gestures vaguely with one of her hands. “They… tell me he will never wake up.” 

Longshot sits down beside her, puts a hand on her shoulder. If it were any other day, she would snarl at him, attack him. “I am so sorry, Rita,” he says.

 

* * *

 

She tells Shatterstar she has a surprise for him, and asks him, “Pick a hand.” He takes his one-in-six shot, and is wrong, but she does not get angry with him like she usually does when he fails. Instead, she pulls two of her hands from behind her back to reveal a set of magnificent, gleaming swords.

“You’re special, Shatterstar,” she says. “Your mother was a mutant. Do you know what that means?”

“Homo superior,” he answers, thinking of X-Men and Earth. “A superior form of human.” 

“ _ Superior _ ,” she scoffs. “Yes, well. You have a gift, Shatterstar.” He eyes the swords, and she almost laughs. “I mean besides the swords. You’re a mutant, too. These swords will only work for you. I’m just glad your mutation manifested before you began airing, so I had time to make these in the Body Shoppe.” 

She hands him the swords and watches the expressions cross his face— curiosity, surprise, glee. Shatterstar hums, and the swords hum with him.

 

* * *

 

“Criminal record,” Spiral scoffs, shaking her head. “That was all the Gamesmaster. Truthfully… Benjamin Russell hasn’t seen the world since he was 13.” 

“Truthfully…” Shatterstar repeats, his mismatched eyes boring into her. “Who was he? What was he to you?” 

Spiral’s silver-white hair whips around her face in the wind. “Truthfully, he was mine. In much the way you were.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you ever think of what your 13-year-old self would think of you?” Spiral asks Tim.

“Of course,” he says.

“Now imagine your 13-year-old self is watching you, all the time,” she says. “So is your 15-year-old self. So are the versions of you at 20, 21, 22. So are you-ten-years-from now, twenty, thirty. All these versions of me are watching me, all the time.”

Tim stares at her. “Then I guess it's good you grew up in the spotlight.”

 

* * *

 

When she goes to visit Benjamin in 1988, he has a new hero. “And he swings his billy clubs and  _ jumps _ … like this,” Ben says, demonstrating as he springs from the couch to the futon. “It’s  _ awesome _ . I wish I could be just like Daredevil. I wanna learn to fight.”

The visceral reaction in Spiral is sudden and painful. “You won’t,” she says fiercely, crossing the room quickly and sticking one hand out of her bulky poncho to set it on the boy’s shoulder. “You won’t fight. You don’t ever have to fight.”

 

* * *

 

“Yours? No,” Shatterstar says, lip curling in anger. “I belong to no one.”

“Not what I meant,” Spiral says. “Not mine to own, or control. Mine to be proud of. Mine to worry about. Mine to care for.”

 

 

* * *

 

Alison hugs her and she's never been so caught off-guard. “He is the man he is today because of you,” she admits. “So thank you. Thank you for doing what you did to make my son the brave, wonderful person he is.”

 

* * *

 

"Why?” Quark asks. “Why are you helping me?”

Spiral looks at him and wishes she could be stone, unflinching, revealing no emotion or regret. “The person I used to be… I can't make her proud. I know I can never do that,” she says. “But maybe I can keep her from hating me so much.”

 

* * *

 

 

Spiral looks up at the bulk of Manor Crossing, thinking about all the time-displaced, world-displaced wretches it houses. The people who followed their hearts and got punished for it. Shatterstar has made them a home. 

No timeline or version of events has ever made her prouder. 


End file.
